Corked Wine

Corked wine always makes for the most disappointing of experiences.

It always happens when you’re going to open that spectacular bottle of wine that you have been carefully storing in your wine cellar for months, or even years. The anticipation is phenomenal and that fantastically well aged bottle is just ready for drinking and the special occasion is just right to open it.

So you remove the cork and carefully taste the wine. UGH!! The distinctive musty, dank, cardboardy taint of rotten cork, even just a trace, completely destroys any enjoyment in the wine.

Perhaps what is worse is that many people do not understand that this is a wine fault and just dismiss the wine as ‘a bad wine’. I have to admit, in my student party days, I had helped drink some very poor wine that I now know was ‘corked’. Mind you I don’t think anyone actually minded, as any student will tell you, the only thing that kept a student party going was the availablity of alcohol, and as soon as it was consumed the party ended!

So what causes it and what  there to be done about it? The taint, known as TCA (or 2,4,6-trichloranisole) gets into the natural cork somewhere along the production process for the cork or even can be picked up from the floor of the winery. It is reckoned that as many as 1 in 20 bottles can be affected and I have personally sent back four bottles, in succession, on tasting in a restaurant before getting one that wasn’t. It can just as easily affect a cheap bottle of plonk or a £1000 Burgundy.

It’s hardly surprising that a lot of effort is being made to eradicate the problem. The tradition cork stopper is therefore under attack like never before. Plastic corks and screwcaps are the main opposition and in my opinion for a wine meant to be drunk young the screwcap (or Stelvin enclosure) is the answer but they are not fool proof. If they don’t go on properly you end up with a badly oxidized wine but the failure rate is better that 1%. Stelvin enclosures are popular with wine makers as (once the equipment has been paid for) they are cheaper. In my opinion plastic corks are not the answer and will only be used on cheaper bottles. I also believe it will be a long time before a Grand Cru Burgundy or 1st Growth Bordeaux has anything other than a traditional cork, not least because they allow just the right amount of air to get through to perfectly age the wine in the bottle.

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